Origins of Impressionism Painting:

 The seeds of Impressionism were sown in Paris during the 1860s and 1870s, as a group of young artists rebelled against the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Young artists like Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and other prominent artists began painting landscapes and river scenes, where they dispassionately recorded the colours and forms of objects as they appeared in natural light at a given time. These artists abandoned the traditional landscape palette and adopted colours that are lighter, sunnier, and have brilliant hues. For example, they painted by playing light upon the water and reflected its colours in the ripples, which reproduced the manifold and animated effects of sunlight and shadow, as well as direct and reflected light, that they observed.

The name Impressionism essentially derived from Claude Monet's work, "Impression, soleil levant" (Impression, Sunrise), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satirical 1874 review of the First Impressionist Exhibition published in the Parisian newspaper Le Charivari. The work was also displayed in the first independent exhibition of Impressionist artists in 1874.

As innovators of their era, the early Impressionists deliberately broke away from the traditional rules of academic painting. They built their images using loose, visible brushstrokes and emphasised colour over precise lines and outlines, drawing inspiration from artists like Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. Furthermore, they depicted ordinary, realistic scenes from daily life in natural environments, often working outdoors to capture a fleeting moment exactly as it was experienced. The first Impressionist exhibition was held in 1874 at the studio of photographer Nadar in Paris, showcasing works by artists including Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Berthe Morisot. Their works were rejected by the conservative Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, but found life outside of institutional walls. Despite initial criticism, Impressionism gained widespread admiration by the late 1880s and had a profound influence on modern art movements, including Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Modernism. Today, Impressionist works are some of the most celebrated and valuable in the art world.